Le Festin chez Simon le Pharisien

Around 1619 Rubens was running the busiest painting workshop in Europe, in Antwerp, turning out large religious canvases with a team of assistants for churches across Catholic Flanders. This is one of them, the moment from the Gospel of Luke when a woman, long taken to be Mary Magdalene, kneels at Christ's feet at a dinner and washes them with her tears while the host, the Pharisee Simon, looks on in disapproval. Rubens splits the scene in two. On the left the Pharisees crowd together in broken, agitated movement. On the right Christ sits calm and still, built from long steady lines. It is a Counter-Reformation picture, made when the Catholic church wanted art that argued its case with force and feeling. A little dog and an overturned stool clutter the foreground where the woman kneels.